The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Harry C. Kochersperger to Walt Whitman, 27 June 1890
Date: June 27, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00129
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Related item: Whitman used the back of this letter to draft trial lines for his poem "Sail Out for Good, Eidólon Yacht!"
Contributors to digital file: Stephanie Blalock, Amanda J. Axley, and Marie Ernster
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Law Offices of
Jones, Carson & Phillips,
Rooms 426–431
Drexel Building
J. Levering Jones,
Hampton L. Carson,
Alfred L. Phillips,
John Douglass Brown, Jr.
Telephone. Dict H C Kochersperger
Philadelphia, June 27th 1890
Walt Whitman Esq.
Dear Sir
May I take the liberty on account of the anniversary of your birthday in this City at Reisser's Cafe1 to ask you to send me an autograph letter, signed by yourself.
I have them from many literary people and you would make me happy by sending yours
Trusting you will excuse the liberty I take,
I Remain
Very Respty Yours young friend
Harry C. Kochersperger
426–31 Drexel Building
Philadelphia Pa.
Correspondent:
Harry Clifford Kochersperger
(1871–1951) of Philadelphia, worked in the banking and brokerage
industries in Camden, New Jersey. Kochersperger and his wife Marie Edith Gane
Kochersperger (1874–1942) were the parents of at least three
daughters.
Notes:
1. For Whitman's seventy-first birthday, Horace Traubel and a group of Whitman's friends (including Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas Harned, and Daniel Brinton) arranged for a dinner on May 31, 1890, at Reisser's restaurant in Philadelphia. Compared to the festive seventieth-birthday celebration, this one was a smaller affair with only thirty-one guests, four of them women. For the planning of the dinner, see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Tuesday, May 20, 1890. Traubel also offers a full description of the event, including the speakers and the lively conversation in his entry for Saturday, May 31, 1890. [back]